Bernanke Faces Critics on Both Sides at Jackson Hole

Markets hang on arguments for and against further monetary stimulus in anxiously awaited speech.

QE or not QE? That is the question the financial markets are looking for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to answer in his anxiously awaited speech to the annual confab of policy makers and academics Friday in Jackson Hole, Wyo. But, Hamlet-like, the Fed chief may not provide a simple response.

In part, that is because the central bank is the target of the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune of being subject to political pressures while in the pursuit of the largely academic question of the course of monetary...